Background

Allen Dulles was born into a rich family with many influential relatives. His grandfather and uncle had both served as US Secretaries of State.[4] He was the younger brother of John Foster Dulles. According to his sister, Eleanor, Dulles had "at least a hundred" extramarital affairs.[5]

Character

A lot of evidence suggests that Allen Dulles was a psychopath. Mary Bancroft recalled that the emotionally dead Dulles’s favorite word was “useful.” People were only good to him if they were useful. His daughter Joan told Talbot that her father was “clearly not interested in us.” A grinning Dulles once told Mary that his feigned bonhomie, his avuncular demeanor, and trusting attitude toward people were an act. He said, “I like to watch the little mice sniffing at the cheese just before they venture into the little trap. I like to see their expressions when it snaps shut, breaking their little necks.”[6]

In the 19209s, Dulles became a director of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1927, the first new director since the Council's founding in 1921. He was secretary of the CFR from 1933 to 1944.

Kees van der Pijl argues that Dulles brothers, along with the Rockefellers, were part of a pro-German state-monopoly tendency within American capitalism, which came to the fore in the interwar-period at the expense of a previously prevailing liberal-internationalist tendency:

World War Two

In September 1939, Dulles and Fish Armstrong published Can America Stay Neutral, which warned that "no neutrality legislation can give us the advantages of an isolation that does not in fact exist."[11]

Century Group

At a meeting of the Century Group on 5 September 1940, Dulles was detailed to chair a committee looking at ways to better co-ordinate British and American production.[12] Dulles drifted away from the Group after the US-UK Destoyers for Bases Agreement that month, apparently feeling it had served its purpose.[13]

According to one BSC document, Dulles intervened in March 1942 to have the British hold their American propaganda campaign against I.G. Farben, on the grounds that "this might involve large American companies like Standard Oil of New Jersey, etc., thereby perhaps impairing the war effort." Thomas Mahl notes that Dulles was himself a former attorney for Standard Oil.[17]

Dulles briefed a Congressional Committee considering the formation of the CIA on 27 June 1947.[22] In early 1948, Defence Secretary James Forrestal asked Dulles to compile a secret report on the CIA.[23] Forestal also backed Dulles in calling for CIA control of covert action, in opposition to George Kennan at the State Department.[24]

In May 1952 Dulles held a secret conference at the Princetown Inn to consider the scope for covert action in Eastern Europe. Charles Bohlen was among those present.[35]

Project Ultra

Dulles and Frank Wisner were briefed on Project Artichoke, the CIA's experimental program on the use of LSD and other drugs for interrogation purposes on 12 May 1952. Dulles approved an expanded program, Project Ultra, a few months later.[36]

CIA Director

Dulles was appointed Director of the CIA in the new Dwight D. Eisenhower administration on 26 February 1953.[37][38] Dulles gave James Angleton responsibility for two areas in addition to his counterintelligence responsibilities, liason with Israel and running Jay Lovestone.[39] In a letter to Eisenhower in May 1954, CIA officer Jim Kellis wrote that Dulles was "a ruthless, ambitious and utterly incompetent government administrator.[40]

Dulles was reappointed as CIA director following the election of John F. Kennedy in 1961. According to Tim Weiner, this was influenced by Joseph Kennedy's awareness that Dulles had been told by J. Edgar Hoover about a World War Two-era sexual relationship between the new president and a suspected German spy.[41]

Hungary 1956

On 1 November 1956, during the Hungarian uprising, Dulles wrongly briefed Eisenhower that "armed force could not effectively be used" by the Soviet Union.[50] On 5 November, however, he told the president that the Soviets were ready to send 250,000 troops to Egypt to defend the Suez Canal.[51]

Indonesia

Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow the Sukarno government on 25 September 1957.[52]Dulles failed to obey the President's order that no American personnel were to be involved, and CIA pilots began bombing in support of US-backed rebels on 19 April 1958. Hower, American pilot Al Pope was captured on 18 May. Dulles ordered the operation stood down the next day.[53]

Japan

Cuba

On 11 September 1959, Richard Bissell sent Dulles a memo proposing the elimination of Fidel Castro. Dulles crossed out the word elimination, replaced it with removal from Cuba and approved the proposal.[55]

On 8 January 1960, Dulles ordered Bissell to organise a task force to overthrow Castro.[56]

Dulles briefed Vice-President Richard Nixon on the CIA's covert operations in Cuba on 2 March 1960.[57] He and Bissell presented detailed plans to Eisenhower and Nixon on 17 March. These called for the infiltration of agents into Cuba rather than an outright invasion.[58]

Eisenhower agreed to train a covert paramilitary unit to overthrow Castro at a meeting with Dulles and Richard Bissell on 18 August 1960.[59] In the same month, Dulles allowed Bissell to take out a Mafia contract on Castro.[60]

At a meeting with President-Elect Kennedy on 18 November 1960, Dulles and Bissell failed to tell Kennedy that Eisenhower had not given final approval for an invasion of Cuba.[61]

On 22 April 1961, following the the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy ordered Dulles to step up coverage of Cuban operations in the United States, an activity outside the CIA's charter. Dulles told the Taylor inquiry the same day: "I'm first to recognize that I don't think that the CIA should run paramilitary operations."[62]

A report by the CIA Inspector GeneralLyman Kirkpatrick concluded that Dulles had failed to keep Eisenhower or Kennedy accurately informed about the operation. Dulles destroyed all but a single copy of the report, which was locked away for 40 years.[63]

Tibet

Eisenhower approved an operation to support Tibetan guerrillas against the Chinese following a briefing by Dulles and Desmond FitzGerald in February 1960.[64]

Dominican Republic

In January 1961, Dulles presided over a special group within the US government which agreed to support the assassination of Rafael Trujillo, the US-backed dictator of the Dominican Republic.[67] The CIA admits providing three M1 carbines left in the US Consulate after the withdrawal of embassy staff, and handed over to the assassins with CIA approval.[68]